The Alexandra Sequence

In The Alexandra Sequence John Redmond views contemporary urban life through the suggestive prism of the ‘mummers play’, a seasonal British folk-theatre staged in the streets and door-to-door. The book’s title takes its name from an area of Liverpool, a city shaped by its recent history of trade and migration, still recovering after a long period of decline. Experiences of urban uprootedness and social precarity shape suburban livelihoods that are ‘livid with accident’.

Drawing on the two central themes of the mummers play – combat and resurrection – the poems reveal both dark and light parallels between the modern neighbourhood and medieval theatre: the carnivalesque zombie-drummers marching through a local park find their mirror-image in the daily disguises of life in a housing estate, or in the masked infractions of the 2011 England Riots. Mixing narrative and lyric, Redmond paints a neighbourhood of lively, unlikely references, from Juvenal to Tommy Cooper, Brueghel to indie rock.

About the Author

John Redmond was born and brought up in Dublin. After taking a doctorate in contemporary poetry at the University of Oxford, he spent two years teaching at Macalester College in Minnesota. He was associated for some time with the poetry magazine, Thumbscrew, and has reviewed poetry for the LRB, the TLS, The Irish Times, and The Guardian.